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it was rather ruined by an extraordinary sense of entitlement which only really comes with being white, male, heterosexual and excessively solvent. This was evidenced by his penchant for manspreading, and talking extremely loudly on his mobile phone about the markets and positions.
She was dressed in a suit made from a bright red tweed that made her look like one of the strawberry creams that were always left in the bottom of a family-sized tin of Quality Street.
Her nickname had been Hermione, because her friends claimed that if they’d had House Elves at their school, Emmie would most definitely have campaigned for their liberation.
‘Oh. No grandchildren. Of course not,’ stammered Ed. Did he mean ‘of course not’ because she was obviously too young for grandchildren, or because she was too lesbian?
What use was a cancer nurse with a fear of death?
People, when confronted with silence, feel the overwhelming urge to fill it with something.
‘So, do you live near Hampton Court Palace?’ asked Emmie,
‘I was fascinated by the Tudors at school. Do you think the headless ghost of Anne Boleyn stills haunts the place?’
There was nothing more awkward and humiliating than a middle-aged woman setting you up on a date.
Sanjay felt like one of the magical creatures of Narnia, seeing the evidence of the White Witch’s powers diminishing. A beaver, maybe. Or a faun. He’d rather be a faun.
The Hampton Court Palace Maze is the oldest surviving hedge maze, commissioned around 1700,
‘Shall we queue up for tickets?’
You have to buy a ticket to get in the grounds in the first place
‘Daemon,’ corrected Martha. ‘Haven’t you read His Dark Materials? A daemon is like your soul outside your body, in animal form. You can never be separated.
One of the many things Ed had to learn is that you must never shit on people on your way up the greasy pole, as they will only shit on you on your way back down.
‘Darling, what is the point of being alive if you go through life unnoticed, without standing out and making waves?
Why had it taken her so long to see her train carriage as a fascinating portal into other people’s stories, rather than just a way of getting from A to B?
It’s the perfect therapy when real life is too hard.
‘Then we went to see a play in the West End – The Importance of Being Earnest,
It would be typical of Piers, who was used to having more than his fair share of everything, to end up with two women when Sanjay couldn’t even find his one.
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If a person doesn’t have a job, and isn’t being paid, do they have any value?
She’d always believed that adults knew all the answers, and that only she was trying to navigate through life without the requisite instruction manual. But it was becoming increasingly obvious that they were often as lost as she was.
Hercule Poirot, he was not.
Shakespeare, she’d discovered, never used four words when twenty-six would do.
everything. If you’re going to get it wrong, Martha, make sure you get it wrong with PANACHE! Surely they’ll give you a mark for style, at least?
She wondered how long it would take before he became as jaded and disillusioned as her other teachers. Teaching one-to-one like that was relatively easy. How would he cope if they let him loose on a whole classroom of teenagers?
It hadn’t helped much. She’d never been any good at taking instructions – not even, it appeared, from herself.
Why was it that men with grey hair and wrinkles achieved gravitas, whereas well-preserved women like herself became invisible?
Deborah took a Jaffa Cake from the plate David had placed in front of them, took a neat bite, then put it back down, unfinished. Iona marvelled at the superhuman display of control and restraint.
How can you tell the difference between concern and control?
Her little oasis on rails.
For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
We have to be seen. We have to be heard. You need to show them what you can do. You are not past it. They want us to be small. You have to stand tall. You are not insignificant. You have to fight.
Life is short, mine possibly shorter than most, and I refuse to waste a single day more stressing about something I can’t control.’
‘I always imagine the worst-case scenarios in any situation. But you’re right. Life is too short to live in fear.’
‘Love is the greatest risk of all, but a life without it is meaningless.’
